MUSEUM OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE AND ART. JULY, 1832. Pours forth its copious stores, and puts a cock in his eyelid. Hail to thee, honest bard!—the bard of bonny Kilmeny! Author of Hogg on Sheep, in fifty magazines writer, Song-maker sans compare, who sang of Magillivray Donald! But really, in writing a sketch of the life of a Scottish shepherd, whose fame is built on his intense knowledge of his own vernacular, and not in the slightest degree tainted by any suspicion of his having any "Bits of Classicality" about him, it is, we must admit, somewhat out of place to make use of the ponderous verse of Homer or Virgil, or Dr. Southey. We should sing him, if it were in our power, in the manner of a Border ballad, and celebrate his irruption into the south, as his predecessors on the banks of Tweed sang the march of the Douglas "Into England to take a foray." He has written three or four himself; Wilson, Lockhart, Dr. Morris, Grey, and half a score others, have biographised the Shepherd. And at the great dinner given to him last week, he favoured the company with a sketch of his personal history, which was so minute as to supply the details of his birth, the moment at which that auspicious event occurred, and the various adventures of the howdie on that memorable occasion. It would be repeating a twenty-times-told tale to explain that Hogg was reared a shepherd-that at twenty years old he could not read or write-that at forty he had published those poems which have been so familiar to all the world ever sinceand that he has since continued to labour with hand and head, putting a stout heart against a stiff brae, and year after year accumulating fresh fame. All this is sufficiently known to the inhabitants of the old world and the new. He has been ever and always a true and consistent Tory, which we mention to his great honour; although it confers little honour on the Tory party, that his exertions in their cause should have been so lightly rewarded. Had Hogg taken the other side, that to which it might have been conjectured his humble origin would have inclined him, and turned his song-making talents to Whig or Radical purposes, we hesitate not to say, that he might have been a dangerous man in the bias he could have given to the lower ranks of Scotland, a country in which such songs as his have always had great influence. Instead of that, he, though of the soil, clung to the Tory cause, and through good report and evil report has been constant and earnest in his sincere adhesion to the party. Therefore we say that he has done the state some service; that he has done himself any, we should scruple to assert, but that we know that the approbation of a man's own mind for honest, honourable, and disinterested conduct, is above all praise. We need not trouble ourselves with writing the life of Hogg. We may say, with the Grub street author mentioned by Horace Wal- We wish him success in his new speculapole, that not even Plutarch himself, much tion, and hope that his series of works will less a cat, has had so many lives as Hogg.sell off in tens of thousands. We were grati Museum.-Vol. XXI. No. 121.-A v, and -s than when it was present drowning not to swim bressed with the stream. But as the philosopher tells us, that, though the planets be whirled about daily from east to west, by the motion of the primum mobile, yet they have also a contrary proper motion of their own from west to east, which they slowly though surely, move at their leisure; so Cecil had secret counter-endeavours against the strain of the court herein, and privately advanced his rightful intentions against the foresaid duke's ambition." For his Doctor d. It m as man. of the d his st, -'ress thout track robaMe de aires, land onest "if Ex urers Winody of d not by deEighth. amoted ly connfell, The adDoctor in, that l's concil conThis, we much of ust have Sardolph's. int misera This was undoubtedly the most perilous conjuncture of Cecil's life. Wherever there was a safe course, he was safe. But here every course was full of danger. His situation rendered it impossible for him to be neutral. If he acted on either side-if he refused to act at all he ran a fearful risk. He saw all the difficulties of his position. He sent his money and plate out of London, made over his estates to his son, and carried arms about his person. His best arms, however, were his sagacity and his self-command. The plot in which he had been an unwilling accomplice ended, as it was natural that so odious and absurd a plot should end, in the ruin of its contrivers. In the meantime, Cecil quietly extricated himself, and having been successively patronised by Henry, Somerset, and Northumberland, continued to flourish under the protection of Mary. He had no aspirations after the crown of martyrdom. He confessed himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon Church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns, took a priest into his house. Doctor Nares, whose simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us, that this was not superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing documents, to deny; while we feel in our own minds abundantly satisfied, that, during this very trying reign, he never abandoned the prospect of another revolution in favour of Protestantism." In another place, the Doctor tells us, that Cecil went to mass" with no idolatrous intention." Nobody, we believe, ever accused him of idolatrous intentions. The very ground of the charge against him is, that he had no idolatrous intentions. Nobody would have blamed him if he had really gone to Wimbledon Church, with the feelings of a good Catholic, to worship the host. Doctor Nares speaks in several places, with just severity, of the sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the incomparable letters of Pascal. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that he should adopt, to the full extent, the jesuitical doctrine of the direction of intentions. round the Cecil so det, the displeaafterwards, the as prudently unthe instrument of the succession. as master of the paording to his own from signing as a sign as a witness. It his dexterous conduct ng crisis, in language that which is employhand wrote it as set quaint writer; We do not blame Cecil for not choosing to thereto. Yea, be burned. The deep stain upon his memory at last yielding is, that, for differences of opinion for which he rland, in an age would risk nothing himself, he, in the day |